The Publication Paradox: why the biggest tech breakthroughs aren't always the most talked about?

Monitoring the news, looking at trends in scientific publications and papers, or using the number of publications on the topic as a metric to rely upon for your technology strategy can be pretty tempting. After all, it's visible, frequently discussed in the media, and appears to be a safe bet.

However, appearances can be deceiving. There are two main pitfalls when it comes to relying solely on a technology's popularity:

• The Late Bloomer Issue: Often, technologies begin trending only when it becomes evident they are the winning solutions. By that point, if you’re only just getting on board, you’re already playing catch-up.

• The Hype Mirage: On the flip side, certain technologies receive disproportionate attention and become the talk of the town, only to fizzle out when they fail to deliver on their promise.

Even with access to the best data feeds, scholarly articles, and technology conferences, innovation managers and engineers still have to sift through mounds of often contradicting data to try and differentiate between real signals and noise.

At Focus, we believe that gauging a technology’s popularity isn’t enough. The real key to success lies in understanding how quickly technology is improving.

In fact, typically it isn’t the most talked about, but the most rapidly improving technology that emerges as the victor, even if it is not popular at first.

Contrary to popular belief, there’s no direct link between a technology’s popularity and its improvement speed. Many times, a technology trend that starts small is the fastest-improving one, disrupting much larger technologies along the way.

So how do we calculate Technology's Improvement Speed?

Inspired by research from MIT, we determined and verified two metrics that are highly predictive of how fast a technology improves: the Technology’s Cycle Time and its Knowledge Flow.

Both metrics are sourced from the patent citation network. While patents refer to each other similarly to scientific papers, their citations are more stringent, making this network highly reliable.

The patent citation network reveals the connections between inventions and identifies which ones pave the way for subsequent innovations. Cycle time measures how many years it takes for a technology to produce a new generation of itself, whereas knowledge flow measures how impactful the new generation is. The two metrics in tandem turn out to be highly predictive of how fast a technology improves and can help you optimize your innovation strategy and back the winning horse in the never-ending race of technological development.

Calculating a technology’s improvement speed by hand isn’t straightforward. It involves rigorous evaluation, analyzing empirical measurements of performance and cost over extended periods. However, we’ve put in the hard work so that you don’t have to. Because we’ve already gathered loads of empirically measured technology improvement speeds, our AI-powered tool has learned to accurately estimate a technology’s improvement speed within seconds.

If you're driven to position yourself at the forefront of innovation and to distinguish true opportunities from mere noise, Focus is your guiding light. We don't just predict the future; we equip you to shape it.